In order to offer a service to customers it is vital to understand which technological requirements are essential for implementing the service. Once the technological requirements have been understood, vendors need to be located in order to provide the service provider with the capabilities that are required to do the job.
Often, the process of finding suppliers, partners or vendors is a laborious task. For example, is it advisable to select the vendor that was previously used on a project and is trusted, even though they might not have the right skills for the job—or alternatively, should a vendor be selected because the vendor is cheaper than another?
Thus, there are many factors to take into account when trying to deploy a new service for the first time. Traditionally, the way to solve this problem has been to employ a number of consultants. A consultant may represent a company (Company A) and hence the consultant will provide advice and guidance with respect to the services and goods of the company that the consultant represents. However, the consultant's company may be ‘tied into’ particular third party products and services; i.e., the company has agreements with third parties for the supply of goods and services, and hence the third parties goods and services may not give the flexibility and versatility required, but the price offered by Company A may be very good. Hence a decision has to be made as to whether flexibility and versatility are to be sacrificed over price. The solution often is to find another consultant who will give a recommendation about their own company (company B) and thus the process starts again until the end results is a number of recommendations by different consultants with often conflicting views and products.
Hence, there is a need for a method and system for finding suppliers, partners, vendors, etc. that overcomes at least one of the aforementioned prevailing difficulties.